Turboblueshttps://turboblues.wordpress.com
A place for my stuff.Sat, 15 Jul 2017 19:37:48 +0000enhourly1http://wordpress.com/https://secure.gravatar.com/blavatar/1599dcc2d159f11294f9ed62706c77c2?s=96&d=https%3A%2F%2Fs2.wp.com%2Fi%2Fbuttonw-com.pngTurboblueshttps://turboblues.wordpress.com
Opening Old Woundshttps://turboblues.wordpress.com/2017/06/10/opening-old-wounds/
https://turboblues.wordpress.com/2017/06/10/opening-old-wounds/#respondSat, 10 Jun 2017 04:31:51 +0000http://turboblues.wordpress.com/?p=617]]>Digging down to the heart of the matter? Otherwise I haven’t a clue… XXXOOO

Small scared boy
in an old man’s body,
worn down too soon
under the weight of his principal sin:
coming into existence at the intersection
of two lives who should never have intertwined.
Altering the vectors of their shared destinies,
a descent into chaos and desperation
and madness and shame
and violence bloody and silently bloodless both.

How can he find release
and the possibility of renewed life
when that spear is embedded too deep,
threatening to eviscerate him if pulled out?

He don’t know
and we don’t know
and a hundred suns will implode
under this darkest matter.
His heart will simply shatter
shutter aflutter one day.

]]>https://turboblues.wordpress.com/2017/06/10/opening-old-wounds/feed/0jgrow2An American Reckoninghttps://turboblues.wordpress.com/2017/01/17/an-american-reckoning/
https://turboblues.wordpress.com/2017/01/17/an-american-reckoning/#respondTue, 17 Jan 2017 03:52:52 +0000http://turboblues.wordpress.com/?p=609]]>Our population has been gaslit over the last three-quarters of a century by, well, not just Republicans but by Democrats as well. And by for-profit media. By well-meaning and deceptive clergy alike. By multinational banks and corporations who, frankly, only care about exploiting “emerging markets” for profit.

Perhaps America’s time has come. The karmic chickens come home to roost.

The United States spent most of the last 70 years destabilizing nations with elected governments that didn’t toe the line we dictated. Those governments were replaced with corrupt right-wing strongmen who routinely murdered, raped and “disappeared” any voices of dissent. The President and Congress didn’t care, as long as the money flowed to the right pockets.

And we all let it happen. You, me, our parents and grandparents, every American. Every. American.

We aided and abetted these actions by buying into the corrosive myths of “American exceptionalism” and “spreading democracy.” And by calling ourselves “the free world,” and actually believing it! Meantime, our government–composed of people we were led to “choose” by the notion of “the lesser of two evils”–shined us on.

Our government, and the people and corporations who paid for it, used the Soviet Union as the ultimate boogeyman to scare the shit out of us, and let them do whatever was needed to “stop the Commie menace.” Of course, that “menace” was basically anything that got in the way of American business.

To fight this “foe,” they paid and armed religious extremists to terrorize and hound the Soviets out of Afghanistan. In the process, creating the Taliban. And Al Qaeda. And, thanks to our meth-like addiction to fossil fuels, ISIL.

They used Christ and the church to sell the idea that Unfettered Free-Market Capitalism was not just a good thing, but that it was right before god. And that Jesus stands with us against “godless Communism.” And they counted on our ignorance and laziness to forget what the New Testament actually said and to just listen to the prevarications from the pulpit.

They dropped billions of dollars of our money on useless and dangerous weapons to scare the Soviets into an arms race which caused them to implode. Which also meant that the Soviet arsenal was now available to the highest bidder.

And so, here we are, surrounded by enemies we created and empowered. Our electoral process tampered with in much the same way as the CIA used to do it under Dulles.

This past November, half the electorate (just enough to game the Electoral College at least), goaded by inchoate, incoherent rage at “lost privilege” and “politics as usual” and the myth of a “Liberal elite” stirred up by a right-wing echo chamber, elected a creature of the for-profit media to be President. A spray-tanned, weave-wearing, short-fingered, thin-skinned fool who epitomizes a quintessentially American vulgarity and narcissism. His dad was a slumlord, his grand-dad a pimp.

He will be sworn in on Friday as the 45th President of the United States.

He is a walking Constitutional Crisis. He, or his minions, may actually be traitors according to that same Constitution.

The grifters and sociopaths that make up the Republican Congress will let this Useful Idiot Twitter his tiny fingers to a nub. Meanwhile, in the background yet in front of our faces, they will continue to destroy the few good things, the few bits of real progress, made since the end of World War II.

It means that they lack the passion and the sense of risk-taking which built Star Trek, and sustained it throughout its first decade–the most critical of its existence.

They do not care about the very people who sustained this dead TV series and took inspiration from it, and created heartfelt tributes to it.

They should be ashamed.

I do not intend to see the new movie the current copyright holders are releasing next month.

]]>https://turboblues.wordpress.com/2016/06/24/treks-end/feed/0jgrow2Legendary Lovershttps://turboblues.wordpress.com/2016/06/19/legendary-lovers-2/
https://turboblues.wordpress.com/2016/06/19/legendary-lovers-2/#respondSun, 19 Jun 2016 03:53:28 +0000http://turboblues.wordpress.com/?p=601]]>We could have been legendary lovers,
but something got in our way,
threw us off the rails
and leave us both alone to this day.

When you put on your sunglasses,
shading you from the world,
my heart aches just a little,
At locked doors and missing keys.

I wish to hold and to kiss you,
show you I’m right here
where I was meant to be,
waiting for you to see
your other half is me.

I’ll always be here waiting,
Waiting for you to see
I’m your missing peace,
your other half is me.

We could have been legendary lovers,
but life got in our way.
Kids and committments,
other hearts and our limits,
so we’re separate today.

But somewhere in our future,
or in some other life,
we are happy together
as man and wife.

But until that day comes,
or till the day I die,
I’ll be standing here waiting
in the background of your life.

And I’ll always be here
just within your reach,
to learn how to love you
by the lessons that you teach.

Yes I’ll always be here waiting,
waiting for you to see.
I’m forever beside you,
your other half is me.

]]>https://turboblues.wordpress.com/2016/06/19/legendary-lovers-2/feed/0jgrow2The Lazy Americanhttps://turboblues.wordpress.com/2016/06/05/the-lazy-american/
https://turboblues.wordpress.com/2016/06/05/the-lazy-american/#respondSun, 05 Jun 2016 22:21:48 +0000http://turboblues.wordpress.com/?p=518]]>The lazy American now stops, strokes his chin ponderously, and decides he will share a tidbit of his profoundness with his echo chamber.

His sonorous pronouncements into the void make a lovely resonance which fills him with self-reverence.

No one responds. No one but him cares of these things of import upon which he importunes. Even he lets his mind drift to some other next thing which interests him, only dropping this–whatever–here so that he might point to it in a day, in a year, and muse upon its empty greatness.

And then he will lurch on to the next distraction.

Meanwhile, machines kill distant unknowns unbeknownst to him in his name, as we lay dying a heat-death in a fevered dream.

]]>https://turboblues.wordpress.com/2016/06/05/the-lazy-american/feed/0jgrow2Tonighthttps://turboblues.wordpress.com/2016/05/21/tonight/
https://turboblues.wordpress.com/2016/05/21/tonight/#respondSat, 21 May 2016 08:18:09 +0000http://turboblues.wordpress.com/?p=594]]>I am a faded lover
of some power and might
You will note–
An old aflame
Uncontained
Once ever
Unchained.

]]>https://turboblues.wordpress.com/2016/05/21/tonight/feed/0jgrow2There Was A Fool In A Dressing Robe… (or, The Who and the Real Me.)https://turboblues.wordpress.com/2016/05/14/there-was-a-fool-in-a-dressing-robe-or-the-who-and-the-real-me/
https://turboblues.wordpress.com/2016/05/14/there-was-a-fool-in-a-dressing-robe-or-the-who-and-the-real-me/#respondSat, 14 May 2016 20:02:37 +0000http://turboblues.wordpress.com/?p=592]]>The Who (Roger Daltrey, John Entwistle, Pete Townshend, Keith Moon) were and are the finest group of musicians to come out of 1960s England. Arguably the finest group the Rock movement ever produced.

Blame it on the MTV. We had it on pretty much from day one. “You Better You Bet,” from The Who’s Face Dances album, was the fourth video played, the first video repeated, and the first Who video I’d seen. I was more into TV than radio at that point.

The Who was novel, and MTV was on almost as often as sports in the living room.

Hearing and seeing the sono-kinetic enigma that is bassist John Entwistle pulled me into their whole sound. It also lit a fascination and an inchoate yet obsessive need to play bass and to write within me which continues to this very second. That very one too.

It’s nuanced, like something old and well considered and personal would be, the place this music has within me.

Of course, if you’ve known me for more than five minutes, odds are you knew all this already about me. Star Trek and The Who. Everything else is negotiable.

Anyway anyhow, my favorite Who albums, as a sonic unit, are the ones from A Quick One to Live At Leeds, with The Who Sell Out being my favorite Who album of this handful. it’s also the last Who studio album I got on cassette, so it has that bit of spirit to it with me too.

Cassettes, and the relatively inexpensive battery-operated portable cassette players with jack for stereo headphones (headphone set not always included), were my go-to source for music in those early years. The tech has improved, the gear is upgraded and the medium is much better than three decades ago, but it’s still me with a small player and headphones.

The bass sound John produced in this period was through a rare Fender slab-body P-bass he had. That bass was wrecked during an American tour. But, John salvaged the neck and electronics from that bass when he assembled his “Frankenstein” bass, the bass whose sound is the epitome of how the Precision, and by extension every bass, should sound. I love that tone.

Anyway, the high-resolution version of The Who Sell Out is on my Pono, and I am hearing it through Oppo planar-magnetic headphones with Surf Cables connected in balanced mode, loving it. Listening to the hi-res version of “Early Morning Cold Taxi,” I can make out Entwistle’s trebly bass line clearly in the deluge.

Communion, then as now, with the music in the innermost chambers within me. Here is my testimony.

====

Daltrey…

Yearning for the god that was always there to begin with, the boy stands small before the blonde colossus, agape in agape love, oblivious to the cold.

Colossus, for his part, loved the attention. But, was still peeved about the boy’s crack about his small stature that night in Worcester. “Little Singer” indeed! And all to impress yer bird innit?

Entwistle…

The bass player was a big dour bloke, near-motionless save for those hands! His fingers fly across the ebony and steel neck of his Attention-Getter like rolling thunder in the key of life.

THAT SOUND! Gods above! Such force pounding the chest and ears of the boy-at-the-cusp-of-manhood. Such seductive, aggressive power! It caused the boy’s heart to reach critical mass and burst into the early morning sunrise of manhood.

This man–this band–was his now. His kin, his clan, as he begins the unwitting process of becoming a man.

They will be his. And, unbeknownst to the boy-man until the day the Ox fell, he was theirs…

Townshend…

He was theirs now. It was the tax levied upon his original rebirth in 1981–or was it ’74? When he’d first heard THAT SOUND.

Sound awakened the other within. Once awake, though, she finds herself alone in the dark and cold as outside, year upon year, the pillars of the boy’s very existence battle and humiliate themselves and their children by torturing and hurting each other.

Abuse–attacker and attacked. The damage done to and by the boy. And those around him. Trusts violated left and right in inchoate weird awakening…

Growing within that pain though, a seed left from sacred Baba through the Birdman’s guitar teaches the boy to speak with the other within…

“Be patient,” said Baba. “Listen! Do your best, then leave the rest to me. And don’t worry; be happy. Remember me and I will help you.”

And so I was, and so I did. Slowly, during long nights, I began to tease her out of hiding. I would show her mind pictures, in trade for which she gave me words. Simple ones at first, but intriguing in their fit and finish.

She was hard to coax, hesitant at first. But in the end, she was my muse. The other half within, which resonates in the presence of cosmic beauty and human frailty. She is me, and I am her.

The trickle of words became a torrent, a stream, a great river. A means to travel. Together they explored worlds of things seen and unseen, and words written or sung within. Moments stolen and bequeathed, passions played out heedless of consequence. Great loves fraught, sought and wrought and in the end squandered all the same.

The soundtrack that brought the boy back was always the same. Whether thirteen or thirty-four, it was always them. Always The Who. They were always there. Until they weren’t.

Moon…

Oh, had he known. Had he considered it before.

Moonie was the ethereal wraith as eternal waif. The boundless madman that drove the music, until it consumed him too. Moon was history to the boy, stories of legendary nights and days of excess, finished by thirty-two. The one who embodied the lyric “hope I die before I get old.”

Rock is a young man’s game. Such freedom is incompatible with mortgages and bills and corporate ideologies, unless sold as opiate to the yearning masses. The ring just out of reach. The youth you never had at the click of a button. The new religion, fitting any shape it’s poured into.

The boy built himself into adulthood. Moving through days of work and nights of passionate play. Through it all, THAT SOUND was the looped way back, life in twelve bars, always back to the One.

Oh, had he known. Had he considered it before.

Life voiced its course, took its toll. The Ox, the boy’s way into the world out of the darkness, passed so poetically. Death by sex-drugs-rock’n’roll, committed by a poor, bitter man with a bad heart in Vegas one summer night.

The boy-as-man sat in his car, numb yet vibrating with the impact. The through-line of his life unmasked as mere mortality behind the facade. He’d had no idea exactly how much he’d given over to them–or how much of this artifice he’d crafted was the self he thought he was–until John Entwistle died.

Bereft, adrift in the river, pushed and tugged by the current. He floated along through days and nights, giving himself to the excesses he’d read about that killed Ox and Moonie. A brief humiliation by and with an ex-wife/ex-friend led to his unmooring. A first look at his real life of hypocrisy.

He sought death now, by cocaine and alcohol and more meaningless sex. He wished for death–Ah, but only passively! He lacked the courage to wield the blade and make the cut himself. If the chemicals killed him, que sera sera! Suicide’s a sin, but an accident is just that, right?

Such was the lesson of Ox and Moonie. The emptiness of the bed you must sleep in made by your own hopeful hand. Only you can craft your way out of the painted corner, but you must burn the whole mess down to do it.

And so he did.

Daltrey (Roger redux)…

Just a man upon a stage. Sweating and shouting truths for a share of the gate. Two old men up there who play the past for a greying crowd. Closer now to belonging to the ages than to…whatever they thought they’d be.

Two men who avoided a lifetime of work to make music. Who made a vocation out of their teenage avocation. And good on them.

The boy-now-man found truths of his own, as much unpleasant as gratifying. Elusive, illusive, interesting only to him, and worth writing down because he told himself so. They were his truths though, and no one else’s.

He made them books and blog pages because it suited them, and it suited him. Once written and put out there, they were just words waiting to hold weight for another. They were hIs no more, except by pride of creation.

He and the muse within sought and seek peace and self-forgiveness through words woven and wept, while knowing that the peace is ever theirs already.

I hope you too can find your own peace and your own self-forgiveness. Yours and no-one else’s.

]]>https://turboblues.wordpress.com/2016/05/14/there-was-a-fool-in-a-dressing-robe-or-the-who-and-the-real-me/feed/0jgrow2Choice Magentative (cmyk)https://turboblues.wordpress.com/2016/04/08/choice-magentative-cmyk/
https://turboblues.wordpress.com/2016/04/08/choice-magentative-cmyk/#respondFri, 08 Apr 2016 07:24:27 +0000http://turboblues.wordpress.com/?p=590]]>(A fragment of something bigger I was working through one Friday night)

Wanting and dreaming of wresting love back
from fate and physics and fury and history and pain,

Futuristorical histrionically
interintrinsicalligorically imperative…

This is what your love was to me.
This is the me that is no more without you.
Unmoored in mourning black & white-knuckling
sober divorcee’s blue, red and grey.
In twilight’s every minute of the day…
Since you went and you
Moved yourself away your embrace denied…
The mourning after the day you voice-mailed me your love died,
My one and only foolish-impulsive ex-bride.

Why do I choose to continue
Enacting my ruminatin’ magisterbations anon and on again?
Another word jazz jelly tonight
Over matrimonially mutual delusional decisions made,
Of impulsively romantic adventure aventured
By two overgrown children one summer.

We twist too much into ourselves,
tying attention into endless knots,
living in a tesseract we assemble
to avoid the inevitable truth.
Better to face the walls you make
than to stand naked before the mystery.

Easier to run
the mazes
you make within
Than to risk
the terror
the other out there
Isn’t it?

]]>https://turboblues.wordpress.com/2016/04/08/hungry-ghosts-2/feed/0jgrow2It Came From The Drafts Folder: Friday ramblings @ Kinko’shttps://turboblues.wordpress.com/2016/03/19/it-came-from-the-drafts-folder-friday-ramblings-kinkos/
https://turboblues.wordpress.com/2016/03/19/it-came-from-the-drafts-folder-friday-ramblings-kinkos/#respondSat, 19 Mar 2016 07:10:33 +0000http://turboblues.wordpress.com/?p=490]]>I never actively pursued journalism in college. I was a theater major at first, then leaned toward English as a major. I seemed to back into publishing as a consequence of being my father’s son.

With the experience I had, a couple of things were obvious from the get-go. First, THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS THE LIBERAL MEDIA. Anyone who’s spent more than a minute in a journalistic setting will be disabused of that notion immediately. Thus, anyone who subscribes to this myth is either being actively dishonest with themselves or with you, or is an idiot.

Or both. Fox News exists as a way of creating and maintaining a dull and credulous audience of mental deficients who are played Pavlov style with tropes that should have died with Reagan’s brain.

Also, and somewhat related: the phenomenon of “unbiased reporting” is not the default setting of journalism. It is what gets taught in school–the five Ws are as basic as the reverse pyramid of crafting a story. But it’s *what sells papers*, or *what gets eyeballs on your page* that is the true default setting.

In the American hegemony, “news” is a business–mainly because we know of no other way to operate. Consider how PBS finds constant difficulty getting and keeping funding for its often stellar reporting.

Raw data is culled and shaped first by the story’s author, no matter how objective that author thinks he or she is. Then, it’s passed by an editor who further refines (or dilutes, depending on whether it’s your words) the product into something that gets shoehorned between ads, the space for which is what pays the bills. And if something about that story will piss off (or merely annoy) one of those paying customers, the story is further “refined” or deleted all together.